ORIGINAL: wdolson
ORIGINAL: pontiouspilot
I am obviously from Canada....that is the blip to the north of USA. Specifically from northern Alberta near mile 0 of Alaska highway. I know there are 3-4 other active Canucks on here.
There are some interesting common denominators in reading this thread: early interest in history and reading (much to my mother's dismay I read rise and fall of 3rd Reich when 12), early war gaming (I started when 11), some model builders, and many ex-military...at least amongst the Yanks. It strikes me that the demographics put 80% of us in the 45-60 yr range, obviously most with post-secondary schooling (I have 2 degrees). I wonder if the generations behind us are here and I'm missing them or whether our ilk are a dying breed?
The Boomers and early Gen Xers grew up with board games and some of the younger of us had something like an Atari while teens. Computers really weren't capable of doing even a reasonable job with a complex wargame until the late 80s. The early wargames were essentially translations of board games onto the screen. As computing power continued to improve, game makers added more eye candy in the way of graphics and real time features.
The Millennials mostly grew up with live action, real time games. Games that require you sit back and think about it a bit is alien. So I'm not surprised this is mostly an older person hobby.
As far as the demographics go, I'm not a perfect fit, but close:
History and reading at an early age - I was always a history geek, but a bit slow in picking up reading for entertainment. My 10 year older sister was reading voraciously by age 3, can read blindingly fast, and I just felt I couldn't "compete". I did become much more of a reader as a teen and always had a pleasure reading book in my bag during college.
Model building - Started at age 3 and have an embarrassingly large stash of unbuilt models today.
Ex-military - never went that route. I knew I would chafe at the culture and I probably would have been 4F anyway (bad knees).
45-60 - Lower end of that range, very early Gen X.
Post secondary - Only a bachelors. Got accepted to grad school but decided not to go.
Bill
Forgive me as I may make multiple posts here, sifting through the thread in the airport as I catch up on what I missed this week...
First, my strongest reaction is to the perception of Millennials as having short attention spans for games, more action games, etc. I'm smack in the middle of said generation (b. 1986). I grew up when computers "came of age", as it were. It's been very interesting. I observe strong differences between myself and others just a few years older or just a few years younger - there is such a difference in my cohort within just a few years. The rate of change of technology definitely has a lot to do with this. People just a few years my senior do tend to be a bit more disconnected, more old school, than those a few years my junior - but this is by no means true of all of them. Some of those older than I are more connected/pugged in than I am, and some of those younger than I display technology habits more reminiscent of Boomers. It's somewhat comical to me that just last night I was sitting in a bar and the Boomer couple next to me was taking selfies and Snapchatting/Instragramming, while I was reading my tablet and am in a domestic relationship with a veritable Luddite who sends maybe 5 texts per year. In any case, I digress... I meant to make the point that the perception of Millennials as being all into fast paced action games or simple mobile games is
probably missing the mark, in that if you look more broadly at gaming you'll notice that it's a universal trend. As gaming becomes more popular, more people play. Those Millennials (and others) who flock to games such as Call of Duty, Wii-style group games, MMOs, and mobile games may not have gamed at all if the technology for these games didn't exist. I think we're just witnessing the universalization of gaming. The degree to which gaming has become accepted, and in some cases encouraged, within our culture compared to just 10 years ago is astounding to me whenever I step back to think about it.
In any case, my origin story, which I've probably related several times in various forms:
Got an NES for Christmas in 1990. It came with Super Mario 3/Duck Hunt combo. It was awesome. Even before that, I'd played arcade-style games forever. My father purchased about a dozen over the years from auctions at the state fairgrounds. My parents still have 7 of them. My mother wants to get rid of them, and I'd love to have them/restore them if I had the resources, but I don't. They have several classics. A table-style Dig-Dug, Zaxxon, Rastan (OK less of a classic but a great game), Centipede, and Baby Pac-Man. Great stuff.
I didn't watch a lot of TV growing up, played outside in the woods building forts and stuff instead (does that sound like your typical Millennial, eh?), but I'd see commercials for games like BattleQuest I think it was called. I ended up getting a game for Christmas one year in maybe 6th or 7th grade. I forget the name, but it was very similar in backstory to Warhammer Fantasy Battles. It was played on a vinyl map with large hexes. There were the forces of the Empire and Chaos + beasties. There were several scenarios, and a big plastic tower and plastic hedges to flesh out the map with extra terrain. It was great. I think it was called Battle Masters. I still have that stuff, though it was long ago co-opted for use as Warhammer/40K pieces.
Around the same time, I met a friend who introduced my to Pacific Theater of Operations: 2 on SNES. I must've played that for hundreds or thousands of hours via video rental stores. I'd rent for a weekend and never leave the house. When I could afford to rent it again, usually no one else had rented it in between so my saved games remained. I eventually purchased it in high school or college. Occasionally I will pull up the soundtrack on YouTube while I'm doing a turn at work...
Other than that, I was always drawn to the WW2 section of the local library. I must've checked out that Campaign for Guadalcanal book a dozen times a year, just for the drawings of ships. I built models, and preferred WW2 planes and eventually moved on to ships. Also dabbled in rocketry. I liked the books with picture sections, so I could flip to the pictures in between chapters and browse. My mother had a copy of the
Midway novel, and I eventually watched the film - Henry Fonda, I believe. Decent flick. IIRC it used actual footage from the battle, yes?
Never went military, although I almost did. In some ways, I wish I had - the benefits to veterans are great. Anything to get a leg up these days... My first year at college, I was having some troubles. I went to the Navy recruiter's office after winter break. After some tests and whatnot, they wanted to make me a "Nuke". I hesitated. I wasn't sure I was really "into" the modern Navy, and that I'd probably get disillusioned. Obviously, I ended up not doing it, but the reason why was a girl. Figures, right? That decision shaped my life in a lot of ways. Don't know where I'd be if I'd gone through with it. Possibly not on these forums.
And these days, I live in Maryland just outside of DC. I think that's included in the "Eastern USA" off-map hex in the game [8D]. I'm from Des Moines, IA, originally.
